Thursday, May 29, 2014

Please God, Not Photos of Teeth...

The word "sort" has an unusual property: the first letter, S, is found
inside the word "first." The second letter, O, is found inside "second."
The third letter, R, is found inside "third," and the fourth letter, T,
is found inside "fourth." Think of a familiar three-word phrase in 10
letters that has the same property, in which every letter in the phrase
is found inside its corresponding ordinal. Here's a hint: It's something
most people have, lose and regain. What is it?

There was some discussion in the comments about how one solves this. Whether you used a computer or not, there is only one answer: SET OF TEETH

Now, there was also a discussion of whether the puzzle itself was accurate. I could go find a photo of a juvenile skull with both "baby" and "adult" teeth--but it's easily one of the scarier things I've seen online recently, so I won't inflict that on you.

What was missing in the comments was an explicit request for Flickr photos found using a specific word or phrase. Hmmph.

But first, let me explain Sunday's photos. The train is TOM CRUISE; the stream (a beck) is GLENN BECK (and yes, I had to cheat on this one because if you type in Glenn Beck with both N's, you get a whole hell of a lot of photos of people for Glenn Beck, people agin Glenn Beck, and people who are Glenn Beck); DREW BREES is the two women, although I have no idea why; NEIL DIAMOND is the Solitary Man; HOLLY HUNTER is the purple photo of the house, supposedly showing that it's haunted; and the frosty photo is TIGER WOODS.

Curtis stressed the word "pretty" in his comment, so let's use that, shall we? I like pretty things...

Our tie-break rule: In the event
that a single round number is announced with a qualifier such as
"about" or "around" (e.g., "We received around 1,200 entries."), AND two
separate people picked the ranges of numbers just before and just after
that round number, the prize will be
awarded to whichever
entrant had not already won
a prize, or in the event that
both entrants had won a
prize already or neither had,
then to the earlier of the
two entries on the
famous judicial principle of
"First Come First Serve,"
(or in technical legal jargon,
"You Snooze, You Lose"). As of July 2012, this rule is officially no longer obsolete (and also I still just like having fine print).